MINILZIP(1) minilzip 1.16 MINILZIP(1)
User Commands User Commands
March 2026
NAME
minilzip - reduces the size of files
SYNOPSIS
minilzip [,options/] [,files/]
DESCRIPTION
Minilzip is a test program for the compression library lzlib. Minilzip
is not intended to be installed because lzip has more features, but
minilzip is well tested and you can use it as your main compressor if
so you wish.
Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to
the one of gzip or bzip2. Lzip uses a simplified form of LZMA
(Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm) and is designed to achieve
complete interoperability between implementations. The maximum
dictionary size is 512 MiB so that any lzip file can be decompressed
on 32-bit machines. Lzip provides accurate and robust 3-factor
integrity checking. 'lzip -0' compresses about as fast as gzip, while
'lzip -9' compresses most files more than bzip2. Decompression speed
is intermediate between gzip and bzip2. Lzip provides better data
recovery capabilities than gzip and bzip2. Lzip has been designed,
written, and tested with great care to replace gzip and bzip2 as
general-purpose compressed format for Unix-like systems.
OPTIONS
-h display usage help and exit
--help
display full help and exit
-V, --version
output version information and exit
-a, --trailing-error
exit with error status if trailing data
-b, --member-size=<bytes>
set member size limit of multimember files
-c, --stdout
write to standard output, keep input files
-d, --decompress
decompress, test compressed file integrity
-f, --force
overwrite existing output files
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-F, --recompress
force re-compression of compressed files
-k, --keep
keep (don't delete) input files
-m, --match-length=<bytes>
set match length limit in bytes [36]
-o, --output=<file>
write to <file>, keep input files
-q, --quiet
suppress all messages
-s, --dictionary-size=<bytes>
set dictionary size limit in bytes [8 MiB]
-S, --volume-size=<bytes>
set volume size limit in bytes
-t, --test
test compressed file integrity
-v, --verbose
be verbose (a 2nd -v gives more)
-0 .. -9
set compression level [default 6]
--loose-trailing
allow trailing data seeming corrupt header
--check-lib
compare version of lzlib.h with liblz.{a,so}
If no file names are given, or if a file is '-', minilzip compresses
or decompresses from standard input to standard output. Numbers may
contain underscore separators between groups of digits and may be
followed by a SI or binary multiplier: 1_234_567kB, 4KiB. Dictionary
sizes 12 to 29 are interpreted as powers of two, meaning 2^12 to 2^29
bytes.
The bidimensional parameter space of LZMA can't be mapped to a linear
scale optimal for all files. If your files are large, very repetitive,
etc, you may need to use the options --dictionary-size and
--match-length directly to achieve optimal performance.
To extract all the files from archive 'foo.tar.lz', use the commands
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MINILZIP(1) minilzip 1.16 MINILZIP(1)
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'tar -xf foo.tar.lz' or 'minilzip -cd foo.tar.lz | tar -xf -'.
The ideas embodied in lzlib are due to (at least) the following
people: Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv (for the LZ algorithm), Andrei
Markov (for the definition of Markov chains), G.N.N. Martin (for the
definition of range encoding), Igor Pavlov (for putting all the above
together in LZMA), and Julian Seward (for bzip2's CLI).
EXIT STATUS
0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file not found,
invalid command-line options, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate a
corrupt or invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error
(e.g., bug) which caused minilzip to panic.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to lzip-bug@nongnu.org
Lzlib home page: http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzlib.html
COPYRIGHT
Copyright c 2026 Antonio Diaz Diaz. License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2
or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Using lzlib
1.16 Using LZ_API_VERSION = 1016
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for minilzip is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
If the info and minilzip programs are properly installed at your site,
the command
info lzlib
should give you access to the complete manual.
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